[vlc-devel] Re: Status of firefox and/or activeX plugins

[Derk-Jan Hartman]

On 21-sep-2006, at 13:03, Jonas A. Larsen wrote:
> I’ve been wondering lately, since we support just about all videos  
> formats at this point. Why is it that the vlc plugins still cant  
> replace the quicktime/wmpt etc browser plugins? I mean if we can  
> play the same fileformats why is it you cant use vlc plugins for  
> sites like break.com, youtube etc?
>
> Surely it cant be much that would have to be changed for vlc’s  
> plugins to be able to interpret the html code?Or am I  
> missunderstadning something completely?

There are several problems:

1: Flash support is still quite weak. I just read a new fix has been  
added to ffmpeg to better read flash on youtube servers. Hopefully it  
will help.
2: HTTP hosting != media hosting even though some ppl seem to think  
otherwise. The problem with hosting a file on a simple web server is  
that seeking requires a lot of connect/disconnects. Therefore some of  
this functionality (avi) is disabled in VLC to protect the servers  
from going haywire.
3: Prioritizing and mime-type registration management in web plugins  
is an absolute disaster. The ppl at Netscape who thought up this in  
the 90s were clearly not looking ahead far enough. A plugin always  
needs to explicitly support a mime-type. And if multiple plugins  
support the same mime-type it's almost impossible to predict which  
plugin will take precedence.
4: VLC does not have native interface elements for the plugins yet.  
These need to be built separately for each platform.
5: Controlling and javascript steering of the various modules out  
there is a complicated and for some parts undocumented process.

There are some other issues of course.
Basically if more people work with Damien (Quovodis) on these issues,  
many should be solved fairly soon now. VLCs embedded plugins are  
improving rapidly mostly thanks to Damien, but there is still a lot  
of work left to be done.

DJ
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